[Seaside] Vision for Squeak/Smalltalk web development

[Jason Johnson]

I like the idea of the homogeneous stack, and I feel like software is 
moving this way.  I will have a blog post about it soon enough, but the 
basic idea is that things in CS always go back and forth.  I don't know 
how many times the industry has switched from homogeneous to 
heterogeneous environments, but we are very hetro right now and the 
pendulum is swinging back the other way in my opinion.

Jimmie Houchin wrote:
> Matthew Fulmer wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:24:02AM -0500, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
>>> What I think would be wonderful for the community to work towards 
>>> overtime and what I think would also help Seaside in garnering a 
>>> potentially larger share of distributed applications. Would be a 
>>> nice, documented, deployable, end-to-end Squeak stack for 
>>> distributed applications.
>>> (Yes no "Web" in that expression. :)
>>
>> I really don't think Seaside is the right tool for distributed
>> applications; it is quite fundamentally a server-oriented
>> architecture. You may find this interesting, however:
>>
>> http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tinLizzie_TR-2007-001.pdf
>
> Well, maybe I didn't express that accurately enough. I don't mean 
> distributed as in many-to-many, but rather simply I am doing 
> Desktopish type stuff from a server based app. I think a full Squeak 
> stack can do better than Google Office or the current supply of 
> server-based Ajaxified apps.
>
> I think we can do those to if we really wanted to, but.
>
> What if offered a Squeak alternative to Google Gears?
> http://gears.google.com/
>
> Google Gears is providing an opportunity to do a desktop type app with 
> client-side Javascript and SQLite. We can do it better and easier, I 
> think.
>
> I may not have expressed myself well in avoiding using "Web" in 
> describing the ideas. Basically I didn't wish to include "Web" because 
> I think we can do better than what the "Web" means to most people. And 
> if you go from Squeak server (Seaside) to Squeak-plugin/Squeak-client 
> then, is it really "Web", or simply something richer being served over 
> http, or somesuch protocol?
>
> Most people are seemingly attempting to bridge the problem with 
> server-side-technology-of-choice (Rails or such) and Ajax/Flash. In 
> which case you have to master multiple technologies, languages, and such.
>
> Question is, is this anything the community wants? How do we motivate 
> ourselves to get there? Can we as a community achieve such? Is the 
> community to small? Lack time? Do we need more people? If it is 
> something we want, how do we overcome the obstacles?
>
> It seems to me that if we want a end-to-end Squeak/Smalltalk stack, 
> that as we solidify, polish and document each piece of the stack, 
> allowing people to use that portion of the stack easier and better, 
> that we will attract others. And hopefully we will gain sufficient 
> people to complete the stack with quality code, deployable solutions 
> and good documentation.
>
> Well, I don't if I've cleared anything up or not. Or if I muddied the 
> waters further. We'll see. :)
>
> Any way, I haven't read the article about TinLizzie yet. But I have it 
> downloaded, printed and in my to read stack. Soon!
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jimmie
> _______________________________________________
> Seaside mailing list
> Seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside
>